Conventional beds found in homes include a four-post frame supporting a rigid innerspring or so-called “box-spring” mattress and a more yielding and softer mattress thereabove, sometimes integral therewith. Frames conventionally come in a few standard sizes, e.g. double, queen, and king, and in myriad configurations, e.g. convertible couch, sleigh, canopy, futon, and others emphasizing buyer comfort and aesthetics, e.g. dark colors (brown, for example) and/or textured surfaces. Most conventional corner posts or legs are made of closed, tubular, e.g. cylindrical, form (characterized by hollow regions defined by penetrable seams) that extends from a perimeter, innerspring mattress frame to the floor on which the bed rests. Many beds include a complementary frame-attached or -detached headboard or floor-supported drawers set often containing upholstered sections and/or cubbies or other covered or enclosed spaces. Some lower-priced vendors of beds and accessories have been known to give away cheap, size-adjustable metal frames with the purchase of a set of mattresses. Box-spring mattresses are known to create undesirably safe harbors for bedbugs.
In institutional settings, e.g. homeless shelters, low-income housing, prisons and jails, dormitories, apartments, hospitals, motels and hotels, and the like, high-density and short-term or otherwise turnover-prone use is common. Moreover, many such institutional settings are fraught with infestation by bugs. Invasive, parasitic, and difficult-to-detect (light brown) bedbugs are an especially common pest, and are nearly invisible to the naked eye, especially in their larva stage of development. (Bedbugs used to be eradicated by the use of DDT, now a banned environmentally hazardous material. Thus bedbug infestations are an increasingly common problem. Those of skill in the art will appreciate that the bedbug commonly has been referred to in the alternative as wall louse, mahogany flat, crimson rambler, heavy dragoon, chinche, chilly billy, and redcoat. Scientifically speaking, bedbugs are of the family Cimicidae of the suborder Heteroptera. The most prevalent human predator variety of bedbug is the Cimex Lectularius.) Mature bedbugs and their even tinier larvae notoriously and insidiously harbor in box-spring mattresses, pillows, bedding, and other penetrable and enclosed or other hiding places. Bedbugs are voracious and nocturnal feeders that find a human host on whose blood to engorge in the dark, typically at night, evidence of the presence of which is more often felt (painfully, the next morning, in the form of bites) than seen.